For years, getting an NHS dentist appointment has felt impossible. People have been left calling dozens of practices, only to be told they aren’t taking new patients,while others have resorted to pulling their own teeth out in sheer desperation. That’s the scale of the crisis Labour has inherited – and the work to fix it has begun.
This month, the Labour Government announced 700,000 extra urgent and emergency dental appointments nationally, including 14,195 here in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. These appointments will mean that people in pain – whether due to an infection, a broken tooth, or another urgent issue – will be able to get the treatment they need without ending up in A&E. And it will make a serious difference in reducing waiting lists.
After years of neglect, this is a desperately needed step towards rebuilding NHS dentistry. But it won’t solve everything overnight. The problems we face go far beyond urgent care – routine check-ups are still difficult to book, millions of adults and children are going without the care they need, and recruitment and retention of NHS dentists remains a huge challenge.
We’ve already seen the damage this crisis is causing. In the past three years, over 700 patients have been admitted to North West Anglia hospitals with issues linked to tooth decay. Across the country, 30,000 children and 70,000 adults were admitted to A&E with severe dental problems in just one year. Tooth decay is now the number one cause of hospital admissions for children aged five to nine.
The Conservatives let this happen. Their ‘New Patient Premium’ scheme wasted £88 million and failed to make it any easier for new patients to access an NHS dentist. They ignored repeated warnings from dentists and patients alike, leaving ‘dental deserts’ like Peterborough to suffer the consequences.
Labour is taking a different approach. Alongside these extra appointments, we’re focused on long-term reform – investing in prevention, recruiting and retainingmore NHS dentists, and making changes to the NHS contract so that dentists are incentivised to take on NHS patients rather than going private.
This will take time, but we are determined to get NHS dentistry back on its feet. The Government has made a promise, and as these extra appointments roll out from April, we are already delivering on it.
If you’ve struggled to get an NHS dentist appointment, I want to hear from you. The more cases we have, the stronger our argument for further action. Please get in touch at [email protected] – together, we can make sure everyone in our community gets the dental care they need.